Global Workspace Theory and Animal Consciousness
Philosophical Topics January 1, 2020 Jonathan Birch
Peter Carruthers argued that if a global workspace theory of phenomenal consciousness is correct and fully reductive, then there are no substantive facts to discover about phenomenal consciousness in nonhuman animals. This paper presents two problems for that conditional. First, it applies a double-standard: the ordinary concept's intuitive non-gradability is treated as unchallengeable by future science, while its intuitive determinacy is predicted to be abandoned. Second, it prematurely dismisses the live possibility that phenomenal consciousness may be linked to a core global broadcast mechanism determinately shared by many animals. Future science may challenge the non-gradability of phenomenal consciousness but is unlikely to eliminate facts about it outside healthy adult humans.